Raging Heroes Berserkers and Warriors

I've been a follower of Raging Heroes for many years now and have been an avid collector of their 3D print file Patreon, and now through their in house service, even though I didn't have a 3D Resin printer until now. I've done a fair bit of FDM Printing but that is really limited to terrain or accessories and I've never had any luck printing humanoid figures in any game scale. With the addition of the Photon Mono X printer to my workshop all of that has changed! I still have a lot to learn but the earliest results are now making their way to the paint desk.

First up are the troops from the Raging Heroes Viking Gods and Heroes theme from the Patreon.  these models have really heroic proportions and are quite beefy models in line with RH's more recent offerings.

I'm hoping to use these in Frostgrave and Kings of War. The bases are also printed from the set and painted in a winter theme. The set has bases sized from 25mm to 50mm. These are 30 mm bases.

I thought the cloaks to be made from the hides of Black Bears for which I imagined this fraternity to have traveled to the wilderness of North America to obtain.

I also had a stab at a unifying tartan for their kilts. These will be repeated throughout the warband.

Flesh tone: are Dark Flesh (Vallejo (V)),Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon (SW)), Dark Flesh (V) Layer, Sunny Flesh (V) Top Layer.

Bear Hide: Carbon Gray (Reaper (R)),Cobalt Grey (R) drybrush, Soft Body Black Wash (SW),Sunny Flesh (V) weathering. 

The Kilts are a bit more complex and I'll likely do a post on just that as I get more comfortable with the process. I think these were a good first attempt and should improve with more iterations.

Hair colors: A lot of red heads a couple of blondes and a guy with black hair... Vikings.

From a printing perspective some of the weapons, particularly the two handed axes, have a bit of a curve to them like they are flexing with the swing. I like the look as it implies motion but I don't know if its an intentional effect or just fortuitous.

The regular Warriors have much more tartan visible so it was easier to get a flow going. 

You'll notice that these guys are in super wide leg stances. So wide, in fact, that it was difficult to contain them on the 30mm bases. Since I want to use these as gaming pieces I really did not want to make the move to 40mm bases because that is usually more of a monster or crewed weapon size. The result was some creative mounting...

The first of these has a stance so wide it literally cannot be contained on a 30 mm base. I decided to mount him with one foot firmly planted on the ground and his kilt attached to a rock to support him solidly. I think its a passable look of a warrior leaping over the rocks to press the attack.

The next fellow had a ...slightly... less wide stance and has the insole of one foot and the very back of his heel touch the base... it was a little dicey and one foot has an extra bit of support on the bottom to insure continued contact.

This guy is more less aggressively spread and you can see the shield design. I kept to the same general colors as were used in the tartan to strengthen the theme.

The group Leader is, ironically, the only one that fit easily onto the 30mm base.

The group shot. One thing I'd love to see RH do is increase the number of troop poses. typically there are 3 troopers and one Troop Leader for a total of 4 discrete poses. Many games use unit sizes that range from 5 to 10. These print as a single piece so it would be nice to have a couple more unique poses. With 5 poses they could be printed as mirrors giving the feel of 10 different poses. Just a thought.

Overall I am super happy to finally be printing these out. The themes are lavish and include Centerpieces and Terrain bits that make the journey from imagination to physical model only because they can be 3D printed. 
 

RWBY: COMBAT READY!

 RWBY: COMBAT READY is a board game that I have not played... it looks super abstract but I'll eventually get round to giving it a go.

I am enamored of the RWBY anime and totally bought the game to mine it for minis... forgetting that they *might not* be in a useful scale...  

The models are in a soft plastic and are a little bit larger than GW Heroic scale. They come mounted on a 38mm-ish beveled base .... awkward! We can see Penny is a bit taller than Sister Veridyan.  I *may* re-base these later and mix them with the Kingdom Death: Death High series but maybe not... some of the models actually use all that base-top real estate.

Penny is my favorite model in the set:

She is a fun character and the least flash ridden of the set.  The models themselves are of relatively low detail and the faces are a poor match to the original art for several of them.

I did find a fun way to paint the base that I'd like to remember how to do...

Black wash

Cloudy Grey (Reaper) blobs (diluted) in a rough cobblestone pattern.

Base White (Reaper) stippled on the grey blobs.

Sewer Water (Secret Weapon) washed thinly over the whole base.

The Sewer Water wash wash attracted to the black washed base and blended the edges of the gray blobs without any help from me.  The White stippling added subsurface highlights giving everything a nice feeling of depth for very little effort.

Moving on from Penny to the natural pairing of Blake and Yang

These had the roughest of the faces but, since anime is so color coded, it all works out in the end.

Other groupings... sisters Yang and Ruby.... and Ruby and dreamy mean girl Weiss

These really use all that base...

Finally the Villans!

All in all I'm reasonably happy with the project.  The characters are easily identifiable and will be fun to have on the tabletop.  I'd have liked them to be a little more in scale with regular tabletop models but they are not so egregiously scaled as to be unusable with Heroic scale models.

Thoughts... Board Game Kickstarters as sources for cool models.... 

I'll be doing a lot less of that unless the models are presented in a scale that is useful to me. So far RWBY: COMBAT READY!, and Darksouls: The Board-game have been in funky scales while The Order of Vampire Hunters and Chronicle X have been in standard heroic scale with bases.  Excluding the board games that are made by war-games manufacturers, like GW and Mantic, or Board-games that are intended to function as, or compatible with, tabletop wargames... like Joan of Arc (15mm) I have to be aware that my idea of proper mini scale is not universal.

With that said... I wonder where Etherfields is gonna land for figure scale?

Next time I finish up some Void Elf Executrix troops that I started working on before the big move and have relocated.

Back to the desk!

Joan of Arc 15mm Core Game, GW Forest Goblin Spider Riders, an Epicast Stomper Tune-up in progress and fun with static grass!

The Joan of Arc game is so ambitious!  Its a board game, a Tanletop Mini Game, its a Historical Game, its a Fantasy Game. It has an RPG and its almost an action RPG right out of the box... It even has aerial combat because.... Angels and Dragons... whew!  Its gonna be a fun ride!

From the core box: The Tarasque, The Unicorn, The Archangel Gabriel, 4 Angels, 2 Bullock Wagons.

As you can see you can go full on fantasy right out of the starter box... I think one of the scenarios is a werewolf hunt even... or you can stay with the historical scenarios. Its a great transitional game.

These were all sprayed a dark camo green primer (Rustoleum), damp-brushed with white craft paint and washed with Secret Weapon (SW) Washes.  The wagons then got a dry-brush of Sunny Flesh (Vallejo(V)) to make the wood pop.

Below is the tray ready for re-interment in the game box... In this Golden Era of Mega-Games I'm going to have to put some thought into how to condense the numerous expansions.

The angels got sky themed bases to go with the sky tiles in the aerial combat portion of the game.  Sky Blue (Warpaints) Stipple with white, wash with Blue (SW).  White robes are layered Graveyard Bone and Splintered Bone from the (Reaper) Bone Triad.   Gold is Brass Casings (SW) Flesh Wash (SW) dry-brush Silver (V).

 Being easily distracted by shiny things... I was unable to simply put the static grass applicator back into its box and decided to fix a long standing problem... namely my ancient 40K second edition Epicast Stompa!  Its never stood well on its own and is heavy enough to take out models it happen to fall on...doh! So I thought I'll just slap a base on it and its "problem solved!" ... 

...then I noticed that the old second edition paint-job looked really, really, dated so... doing something I very rarely do... I decided to do a bit of an update.  These are the pictures of its original state except for some black lining I started to do before remembering to snap a photo.  I'm going to preserve some elements of the original and bring it up to date without starting from scratch.  Well, that's the plan anyway!

The completed Forest Goblin Spider Riders. Ready for an Oldhammer rumble!

Speaking of a rumble I literally hate this new Blogger interface!  Its more primitive than its predecessor and seems specifically designed to be rigid and unwieldy.  For example I'd like to put this sentence at the bottom of the page... but I can't do that without actually removing the picture below... fabulous improvement... This update would normally have taken be about 15 minutes to compose on the fly but I've been at this now for three hours and still can't get the words and the pictures to go where I want them.

MADE
  OF

 FAIL  

The Port House 3D Print

 I'm flinging paint at the model backlog in between bouts of pre-move prep so I have a half dozen projects in one stage or another of completion that I hope to finish before pack out.

This is The Port House from Rampage: The Lost Islands Kickstarter.  Rampage is very aggressive with releasing files and they often follow up the initial file release with some adjustments, improvement, or corrections soon after the initial offering. This is the 1.0 version of the Port House.  They have updated this, and several other models from the project, since I printed it and it seems that they have generally re-scaled the models for the more common Heroic scale.  That means that this model is a wee bit petite compared to my other buildings.  Its even a bit small compared to the Tabletop World buildings that are scaled for true 25mm.

 Since most of my games that use this style of build tend to be fantasy themed I'll imagine this as a mouseling, or gnome, building.  I'll have to do up some mouselings with timber floor bases!

Actually for gaming I probably should have moved to clear acrylic bases years ago... but I didn't... so now I'm not inclined to do so... maybe when I start a completely new army I'll give it a go but I'll otherwise keep trying to theme match the bases for the existing sets.

Gerystone and wood standard process.  I skipped out on plaster for this one and may go back and add it later... I had some print errors with this model and went with it being a bit run down.

 You can see the very wide back window area that looks like exposed wood... printer error... also some of the supports for the railing failed to survive the print and some outside wood supports and one face of each of the doors are a little fuzzy or deformed.  This was an early 'learn to print' model for me and I learned a lot.  Still, I think it'll be serviceable enough on the tabletop as part of the larger town so no need to let it go to waste!

For scale there are some Twisted minis, a couple of Lead Adventurer minis, and some Reaper Mouselings.  The other buildings that I'd like to compare it with have been packed so I'll have to do that on the other side.

 I've done a lot of the Greystone Village buildings and I'm trying some new things.  Since this building has a tile roof, instead of a wood shingle roof, I went with a variegated red tile.  It was fun to play with the color mix to get a more natural looking roof.  The rest of the Lost island buildings tend to have this tile roof so it'll be a nice addition to the wood shingle schemes I've already done.

The Greystone has been a theme here for a long time but I think the next step will be to add some variations to the stones.  I'll probably do that with the next several residences but stick with the more monochrome grey for working buildings like shops, forges, warehouses etc.. 

I've also skipped on putting magnets in this building as the magnets seem to have found themselves packed up already.  It holds together very well as is and each level is in two parts that are offset from the level below.  I'll likely put magnets in the bottom level at least just to encourage it to stay together through vigorous rotations but it seemed to spin and slide and stick together as it is so no rush on it... one more thing to remember on the other side.

 The roof tile started as an Amethyst (Secret Weapon) wash over the black base followed with a Gory Red (Reaper) Dry-brush then patch dry-brush areas... some with Phoenix Red (Reaper) and other areas with Scrofulous Brown (Vallejo). 

The printer error is also visible from the outside rear of the model as a elongated window but I just painted it to resemble wood slats and moved on.  I think it adds some character to the model!

Pack Pack
Paint Paint
Zoom Zoom!

The Order of Vampire Hunters Board Game - The rest of the Kickstarter Exclusive Hunters

The remaining eight Kickstarter Exclusive hunters are ready to pack.  I'm racing to wrap up the open projects on my desk before the big move... lots more to do!













First up are Akecheta and Samuel.  I think of these as  'ranged heavies'.  They are done mostly in earth tones and raw metals.

 The next set I think of as 'finesse melee' types. They like to get stuck in but are not relying on overpowering their enemies to win.

These are more colorful than most of the hunters.

Emma looks straight out of Vampire Hunter High with the rising sun tee and pink sneakers.

Daniel Stoica was the first Kickstarter Exclusive Hunter and its unclear whether or not the rest will be seen at retail.  I hope so because there are a lot of cool archetypes that will otherwise be few and far between. Daniel is the Samurai-esque Hunter that is done in emerald and saffron.

 Isabella is a Conquistador themed hunter that seems wildly out of time... Who knew that Vampire Hunters tended towards cosplay!

Painting her reminded me of a buccaneer themed Ogre Kingdoms army I painted that featured various colorful, usually striped pants/pantaloons.













The last set of hunters is Jean-Louis, Bram, and Billy-Bob.

Jean-Louis looks like he caught the Time-ship during the Napoleonic era although closer inspection revealed that some vampire sourced bits have augmented his uniform.

Bram is a classic tough guy hunter in an armored duster while Billy-Bob is a bruiser with electrically augmented boxing spikes.

Finally I'm taking a moment to remember a friend who passed away yesterday.

Rich was a great friend and a genuinely fun guy to be around.  He very much inspired me to keep the ogre pants theme going for an entire Ogre Kingdoms army some years ago. His jovial good nature, quick wit, and constant encouragement made that project very special indeed.  We ever-after greeted and made our farewells with shouted OGRE PANTS!  Farewell Rich, I'll see you on the other side.

 RIP OGRE PANTS!

A WiP kinda day... Tabletop World Fisherman's House, Order of Vampire Hunters and a 3D printed Skiff.

 I've been busy this week doing, mostly, batch painting.  Lots of wood textures that are easier to do when there is a pile of them ready to work on and the last of the Order of Vampire Hunters hunters.

I love the Tabletop World stuff and the Fisherman's House is no exception.  The resin cast is clean and crisp with tons of atmospheric details.  I have to version of this model. This one will likely get the most use as it is designed to sit on a flat table or gaming mat while the other one is mounted on a river section that integrates into a larger river system. 




The river system looks amazing but takes a lot more work to make usable on the tabletop.  That project will certainly be the subject of a future post!


The wood here is all done with the standard wood process. The white walls are P3 Jack Bone and Splintered Bone (Reaper) transitions between walls, wood, and stone are edged with Baby Poop (Secret Weapon. Ropes and nets are the same with a top dry-brush of Buckskin Pale (Reaper)

Because the Fisherman's house is also a place of business I am going with a weathered blue roof. Most of the merchant buildings in my Graystone Village have blue roofs to welcome custom.

The Fisherman's House is also getting a weathered red balcony to make it easily identifiable to other fisherman as a place to sell their catch.

There is still a bit of detail work to do on these, especially the metalwork on the balcony, windows, and weathering of the roof tiles.

 This is the accessory kit for the Fisherman's House...ignore the black balcony... its actually part of a Wizard's Tower that I should be working on next week.

 The end is in sight for The Order of Vampire Hunters Kickstarter Exclusives box.  This is a great game and its unfortunate that so many cool hunter types were only made available for the Kickstarter. I still have a big pile of expansions to work and although most of those include new adversaries there are few new hunters in them.  Room for future development!

This is a "Skiff" I 3D printed.  It was large enough that its in three section and I magnetized them for ease of storage and transport.  I've been scratching my head about printing the rest of the fleet due to the small build volume of my Snapmaker... so I was very happy to hear they are making a z-axis expansion module for it that should significantly increase the size of the objects I can print!

Back to the desk!